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Friday, April 20, 2018

Author Interview: Christopher Bardsley: Author of Jack Was Here

Christopher Bardsley lives and works in Melbourne,
Australia. He undertook his studies at the University of Melbourne, where he
received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Teaching. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Above
Water prize for fiction. While he is primarily an author of novels, his
interests also include modern and ancient history, with a particular focus on
interpreting extremism. Christopher teaches literature and history at
independent schools in Victoria. Jack
Was Here is his first novel.

Jack Was Here

Hugh Fitzgerald is losing control. In the aftermath of a traumatic
end to his military career, his life has disintegrated. Hugh is approaching the
end of his tether when a desperate plea for help arrives from a most unexpected
quarter.
Nineteen-year-old Jack Kerr, halfway through a coming-of-age
trip to Thailand, has disappeared. He has left few traces, little information, and
absolutely no answers. As the days turn into weeks, his parents grow increasingly
frantic.
They approach Hugh with a simple request; do whatever it takes
to find their son, and do whatever it takes to bring him home. It sounds easy enough.
The money is right. More importantly, it’s something to do–something useful.
But as soon as Hugh touches down in Thailand, the illusion
of control begins to slip through his fingers. Jack’s warm trail is easy to find,
but it leads somewhere unimaginable. Finally, as he closes in, Hugh is forced to
resort to increasingly desperate measures.Jack Was Here is
an intoxicating glimpse into Thailand’s underworld.
A startling debut from Christopher Bardsley.

How do you come up
with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc?

I’m always on the hunt. Anybody spending too much time in
my vicinity is likely to have their personality harvested for interesting
quirks. Character names are plucked from here and there, and mashed together
until they seem reasonably plausible. My imagination is a bit of a
blender. To be perfectly honest, I don’t actually know where it all comes
from. I don’t need to know, either, and it’s not something that I spend too
much time contemplating. In terms of point-of- view, most of my work has
been in the first person. That’s not a rule by any means, but I do prefer
the subjective to that omnipotent third-person voice-of- god that can be so
difficult to manage.

When did you begin
writing?

As soon as I could, really. If the question is when I
began properly focusing on writing, I would say that was around the age of
nineteen or twenty. Since then, I’ve constantly had some sort of long-form
project on simmer. Most of the early work is wedged safely at the bottom
of a drawer, of course, but the apprenticeship in this trade is probably
not something to be rushed. I’ve always been vaguely suspicious of the how-to-
write industry, and I’ve never had any formal training in writing fiction.

Do you work from
an outline?

I do work from an outline, but it’s a very nebulous one.
I never know exactly how my stories will end when I begin writing them. I
think it’s important to give your characters enough room to make their own
decisions. The outline evolves as the novel progresses, and the plot can
often veer off in wildly unexpected directions. I think the danger of
having too much structure in your planning is that you can fall into the trap
of designing a story around what you see as its message. Whatever meaning
a work of fiction might generate is a rather private interaction between
the novel and its readers. This is not something that the writer should curate
too deliberately, lest the plot descend into a clunky parable.

Tell me about your
favorite scene in your novel.

I do particularly like the scenes that revolve around the
full-moon party on Koh Samui. This is perhaps the most lurid and violent
section of a lurid and violent novel, and I hope the atmosphere does tribute to
this fairly remarkable spectacle. Anybody who has ever had the dubious
pleasure of attending one of these parties might agree that it makes for
an arresting backdrop. I found it both ugly and compelling, doubly so when I
made the mistake of returning to the scene of the crime in later years.

The southern islands of Thailand have been so thoroughly
ruined by the tourist industry that it is impossible not to feel a little
nostalgia for what they might have been before, even if you were never there to
see it for yourself. A reviewer recently (and correctly) speculated that
Jack Was Here is unlikely to be endorsed by the tourist board of Thailand.
I sincerely hope that the novel doesn’t read as an indictment of the country. I
love Thailand, and I have spent a lot of time there over the years. Enough
time, though, to get a sense of the dangers particular to the backpacker
scene. Westerners have been coming to untidy ends in the tropics for centuries. There
is something underneath all that white sand and neon that can send otherwise
sensible people unstuck. I’ve seen it myself more than once.

This is a fairly violent novel.

What are your
thoughts on violence in fiction?

I did have to deploy a certain amount of violence in
order to realise the plot of Jack Was Here. Personally, I don’t
necessarily object to violence in a work of fiction, but I do think that it has
to be there for a reason. I am not interested in bloodshed and suffering
as a form of entertainment in and of itself. I think that it’s irresponsible to
celebrate or glamorise violence, and I can think of more than a few famous
writers and directors who are guilty of this. It must serve a purpose.
This novel is ridden with conflict, and killing has completely defined the life
of the protagonist. Hugh is already a profoundly traumatised character at the
beginning of the novel, and I would hope that readers understand that each
act of violence he commits actually takes him further and further from his
goal. In certain circumstances, good people are capable of perfectly dreadful
acts. This is one of the great conundrums of human nature, and makes
compelling subject matter for any author.

Have you ever
tried writing in any other genres?

I wouldn’t consider myself overly bound to any genre in
particular. I have a secret yen to write a sci-fi novel. This would be an
undertaking to be approached carefully, though. Science Fiction is a wonderful
genre, but terribly uneven. If you’re planning to create an entire
universe, then your technique has to be on par with your imagination.
Managing exposition is enough of a challenge in the real world.

What advice would
you offer to a young writer?

Stubbornness is a deeply underrated quality for any
writer. To paraphrase Vonnegut, talent is actually surprisingly common.
What is rare is the ability to endure the life of a writer. Writing novels is
not a pleasant or glamorous pursuit. It can be frustrating, lonely, and
there are no guarantees in this business. Your motivation cannot depend on
external validation. There will be a million opportunities to quit. Real
writers push forward, treat their trade seriously, and believe in
themselves. You have to keep the fire burning on your own.

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About Me

With a profound interest in religion, liberal politics and humor, Dave began writing in high school and has not given up on it since. His first professional writing jobs came while attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh when he was hired to create political cartoons for the Pitt News and to write humor pieces for Smile Magazine. Dave has worked in the newspaper industry as a photographer, in the online publishing industry as a weekly contributor to Streetmail.com, and was a contributing writer to the Buzz On series of informational books, and his story, The Bet in Red Dust, appeared in the Western online anthology, Elbow Creek. Dave’s science fiction novel, Synthetic Blood and Mixed Emotions, is available from its publisher, writewordsinc.com.
Dave currently resides in his childhood home in Toronto, OH with his beautiful girlfriend and his teenage daughter. He enjoys participating in local community events and visiting with his two adult children and his grandkids. Join the Facebook fan-page at https://www.facebook.com/Lupaschwartzmysteries.